the Week of Proper 25 / Ordinary 30
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Bible Encyclopedias
Pope
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or Having treated in the article PAPACY (See PAPACY) of the rise and development of the papal dignity and power, we shall speak in the present article of the personal attributes of the incumbent of the Roman see.
I. The Title. — The word pope is derived from the Latin papa, Greek πάππας, and means father. While the Greek word was used in the Greek Church to designate both bishops and priests, and has gradually come to be reserved for the priests exclusively the Latin term was for several centuries a title applied to all bishops, and was finally reserved for the bishops of Rome. As far as is known, bishop Siricius, in the 4th century, was the first to use the word as a title. After the 5th century it came into more general use, and after the 7th it gradually disappeared from ecclesiastical language for every ecclesiastical dignity except that of the bishop of Rome. It was expressly made the exclusive prerogative of the Roman bishops by Gregory VII. In a like manner several other titles, which at first were applied to the bishops of the principal seats, such as apostolicus, dominus apostolicus, sedes apostolica, were gradually monopolized by the bishops of Rome. The designation servtus sermorum Dei was first used by Gregory I, and though occasionally also bishops, priests, and emperors adopted it, it likewise remained in the course of time the prerogative of the popes. During the 8th and the following centuries it was common to call the bishop of Rome vicarius Petri. The expression occurs in the Pseudo- Isidorian Decretals, in the oath which was taken in 722 by Boniface to Gregory II, in the oath taken by Gregory VII to the king of Germany, in the conclusion of peace between Alexander III and the emperor Frederick Barbarossa; but from the time of Innocent III, when the power of the popes had become more absolute, the vicarius Petri gave way to the vicarius Christi. The title Sanctitas tua or Beatitudo tuc, which came into use in the 3d or 4th century, the pope shares even now with the bishops of the Eastern Church. It is accorded to him even by Protestant governments. (See Brit. and For. Ev. Rev. Jan. 1866, p. 48 sq.)
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